{* Inline styles are used for the login buttons here because the use of #menu id selector supercedes use of selectors *}
{* here without the use of !important. Rather than fix #menu, just port pages to HTML5 templates. -- MM 2013-08-16 *} ?>

Advanced Search Results

I see you in cracked mirrors
when I'm browsing vintage shops.
They remind me of your eyes
when you kissed me like you meant it.
When I'm browsing vintage shops,
I think of stealing broken lamps because
they remind me of your eyes.
You used to melt into my fingers.
I think of stealing bro...

If only the dance hadn’t lost its grip on my shoulders.
Had I let myself fall into the spotlight
had I let my hips press against nylon,
I might not have fallen upon the concrete
and skinned my knees.
Might my scars have appeared like
runs in tights on thighs making lines
from my hips to ...

I carry you like a poem on my arm,
written in sharpie to take it from my
pounding head. Missing you should do no harm
but to every day remind me why
the ink has faded but you remain.
I’m reminded of your leaving at night
while watching you run down the shower drain.
In this silent heat I kn...

I’ve never been the optimist, never bled sunlight or kissed fertile soil. I have always been the girl waiting on the concrete saying “it will never happen again” whenever a good thing lands on my fingertips and vanishes quickly in soapy nonchalance.
I learned to kiss in the summer with eyes...

Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba
In the darkness of the first night, when the words come dry,
I haven’t yet remembered how to move or breathe again,
and questions fall with the rain
snaking into storm drains before they’ve touched your lips like
B’alma di v’ra khir’utei
the way ...

When I was a child I thought I'd be
The sky. I pretended I would use my
Eyes to paint myself blue, talk to the trees,
Inhale the clouds and exhale my heart by
Letting it beat in time with the wind. Snow
Would line my lungs and shield me from black ice,
Hail, and airplanes. Up there no one
wo...

Nigerian blood tastes like 1978, strobe-
colored changing colors so blue is green is
yellow is gold is African-colored midnight
with pink flowers bursting and beauty and
red. Nigerian blood smells like afrobeat like
high as an Orisha political Elvis embroidered pantsuit
sort of life sort of w...

We were grappling with this dichotomy
of when old we are, just waiting to taste
flinted fire and lifeblood in the darkness.
We’re part of some incorruptibly perverse procession
scrubbed squeaking shining
soft shaven slow
shimmering smooth, scalped
souvenirs of something suffered. We
starve...

In the morning
I didn’t have to ask
Why you tasted
Like summer in the morning
I didn’t have to ask
While you suckled overmint
How are you?
At noon
My fingers blistered
Burned in air
Combustion in your baby blues
At noon my stomach burned
And knees knocked
How are you?
Mid aft...

I kissed the corner of a prayer book
before I ever kissed a boy.
Swinging limply on worn rubber
soles captured brusquely in your
cinnamon eyes (they sparked in holy
water, those frayed wires),
I discovered the hollowness of bones
and the fragility of theism.
I composed soliloquys to the joy...

We sipped liquid afternoon,
A metallic concoction of sunlight, creek beds,
American cars, and the dust
Scraped off your ivory toes because your daddy
Said no working man would ever have tan feet,
The only time he was ever right.
The older kids said it was a rite
Of passage to have sex behi...

You were like gasoline
burning in match light and dull candle
fire. You were like the morning,
like fog that chokes and blinds
like the water. You
were like salt stinging clogging
scraping against the street and tire treads
and souls. You sipped streetlamps
like California wine, sonnet
swee...

I heard the concrete
and remembered singing summer,
artificial sugar tunes,
and your eyes, copper sublimed.
I was
as the sky is
I belonged to the afternoon
where you counted clouds
and named me
Blue.
I spent my nights
with the lions
where the colors were the yellow
of kings and of yo...

On the beach writing suicide notes
They were laughing
And the waves danced around them
And the paper got wet and they didn’t care
And they threw their pencils into the water
They went swimming to find them
And in the waves they opened their eyes
For a few clear seconds before they started t...